OPINION:
House Republicans have set their sights on the left-wing censorship industry, which stretches from the Biden White House to the liberal media to front groups that harass conservatives under the guise of “fact checkers” and “disinformation.”
It marks the first major counteroffensive by the new House majority against a burgeoning collection of speech control advocates who protect President Biden and want conservative journalism erased.
The speech cops are tangled up in the same liberal forces who vigorously defended these doozies — the Kremlin-sourced hoax known as the dossier; China’s germ-making Wuhan lab; virus lockdowns and no-fault vaccines; President Biden’s lies; arson wildfires as “climate change”; Kremlin-Trump election conspiracy; Hunter Biden laptop revelations as Kremlin “disinformation”; Arctic ice gone in 2004, 2008, 2014; “mostly peaceful” 2020 riots; and the border is secure.
Any journalists or conservative politicians in 2020 who raised the Wuhan lab and its messy bat virus experiments as a likely COVID-19 source were uniformly vilified by liberals who became the Chinese police state’s most ardent defenders. Just ask Sen. Tom Cotton, Arkansas Republican. One major media outlet called Wuhan lab critics “racists.”
Meanwhile, here are un-fact-checked liberal heroes: Michael Avenatti (our next president); Jussie Smollett; Christopher Steele; FBI dossier boosters James Comey and Andrew McCabe; Rep. Adam Schiff; accused fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried; the progressive Democrats in “the Squad”; and anti-police, anti-border billionaire George Soros.
(Avenatti and Smollett, both convicted of crimes, were exposed by conservative and local media as they continued to bask on TV.)
The mightiest hammer in this left-wing tyranny is Mr. Biden’s and Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice. Studded with Biden cronies, it is the most oppressive American federal institution in modern history.
Mr. Garland has sicced the immensely powerful FBI on parents of school-age children exercising their First Amendment right to challenge “woke” brainwashing, pro-life families, Catholics and noncomplying social media platforms.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan has seen enough.
After showcasing FBI informants to tell what a rotten place the seventh-floor headquarters is, the relentless Mr. Jordan is focusing on organized left-wing censoring.
He was busy in July.
On the 17th, he sent a letter to META/Facebook/Instagram CEO Mark Zuckerberg to keep up the building GOP pressure. Mr. Jordan warned the liberal billionaire who financially helped Democrats win the presidency that a committee subpoena issued in February for documents related to Biden administration censorship is still in force.
It covers Mr. Zuckerberg’s new blogging site Threads, established to compete with Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter).
“Given that Meta has censored First Amendment-protected speech as a result of government agencies’ requests and demands in the past, the Committee is concerned about potential First Amendment violations that have occurred or will occur on the Threads platform,” he wrote.
Mr. Jordan’s subpoena dragnet has already produced startling results.
White House digital director Rob Flaherty engaged in talks with Facebook to persuade the social media platform to tweak its algorithms to favor New York Times and Wall Street Journal stories over conservative media, Just the News reported. (The WSJ newsroom is one of Mr. Biden’s favorites. Who knew.)
Mr. Flaherty wanted Facebook to downgrade The Daily Wire and Fox News contributor Tomi Lahren, according to company documents obtained by Mr. Jordan.
Both of those conservative voices were raising concerns about the COVID-19 vaccine — a topic that in a free society should be allowed, not suppressed, by the president.
Mr. Biden once swore to the American people that if you get the vaccine you won’t get COVID-19. This wasn’t true. Mr. Biden, who is vaccinated, has contracted COVID-19 twice.
On July 20, Mr. Jordan released details from a staff interview with Laura Dehmlow, section chief of the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force.
Ms. Dehmlow told the committee that at the same time, the FBI was warning social media in 2020 of a Russian “hack and leak” operation. It knew the Hunter Biden laptop story was not a Kremlin plant.
The FBI’s conclusion came well before 51 former Obama intelligence officials in a public letter falsely said the laptop was Russian hacking.
Ms. Dehmlow recalled a conference call with Twitter in which an FBI official told them that the laptop, as published by the New York Post that day, Oct. 14, 2020, was real.
Unimpressed, Twitter subsequently banned sharing the New York Post story
In a meeting that day with another social media giant, Facebook, Ms. Dehmlow said “no comment” when asked if the laptop was authentic.
On Aug. 3, Mr. Jordan broadened his inquiry by targeting the U.K.-based Center for Countering Digital Hate, a Biden favorite. His letter to CEO Imran Ahmed implies the group is in a conspiracy with the White House to harass conservatives who do not toe the liberal line. Mr. Jordan wants to know with whom the center talks and where it gets its money.
Mr. Ahmed has his roots in Britain’s left-wing Labour Party, according to Influencewatch.org. His group has worked with NBC News to try to censor and defund The Federalist, a conservative investigative and commentary mainstay.
After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, social media lit up with liberal racial slurs.
“[Supreme Court Associate Justice] Clarence Thomas is a dirty porch monkey and as a trans woman I’m giving everyone permission to use the n word on him,” one troll said, according to Newsweek.
Last month, Democratic Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison likened Justice Thomas to a “house slave.”
In an email, I asked the Center for Countering Digital Hate if it had ever called on any platforms to take down hate attacks on Justice Thomas. I received no reply.
• Rowan Scarborough is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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